1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to computer systems and specifically to a voice-data terminal including user units with digital logic and microphone pickups strung in a daisy chain of identical units all of which couple to a single controller.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Technology, in its various forms, has allowed the instructional classroom to be extended beyond the traditional campus to remote student locations by telecommunications. Community colleges have been offering telecourses for academic credit nationwide for at least the last ten years. Students in their homes may tune into tape recorded video series that are broadcast by PBS TV stations at regular times. Then, two or three times a semester, the telecourse students may meet on campus to take mid-term and final examinations. Usually a regular instructor has responsibility for conducting the tests and helping enrolled students during the progress of each telecourse. Currently, lower division undergraduate credit can be earned in this way in oceanography, geology, mathematics, business, and marketing, to name a few. Successful students learning with this form of instruction do so in spite of a lack of close contact with an instructor and sacrifice the ability to ask questions during lectures. One advantage is that telecourses are relatively inexpensive for all those involved because the local community college merely synchronizes itself with the schedule decided by a local PBS TV station that typically serves a region comprising several community college districts. The television station bears the expense of studio and transmitter equipment and the software when a video tape is provided in a syndication. The students need only to tune in a television receiver he or she may already own.
Businesses very often find it easier to cover the cost of more exotic teleconferencing and teleinstruction to conduct conferences and instructional sessions. Teleconferencing permits two-way picture and sound communications with the participants, but is much more expensive than ordinary telephone conferencing since special purpose video equipment and a video grade channel are needed to interconnect the parties. Teleinstruction allows a special interest class to be convened and communicated across town or across country on a secure channel if needed. Large, international companies use teleinstruction to train their sales forces that are physically located at various cities throughout the world. Traditional teleinstruction has not permitted individual students to communicate in real-time with the instructor, except as a member of a single site with a common audio channel.
There is a need for a system for remote distance education that permits an instructor to be informed of which students at remote sites wish to speak and to enable students desiring to speak to the instructor to have an individual audio channel communicating back to the instructor's studio facility.